The fiscal gains from, and hence the political incentives for, an increase in the inflation rate of ten percentage points may be substantial: Swedish data from 1994 suggests an annual real flow of 3–4% of GDP, or a capitalized value of nearly 100% of GDP. These gains would have arisen mainly...

This 2003 Institute for Fiscal Studies Lecture addresses two sets of issues relevant to current and prospective future E(M)U members: the consequences of the Stability and Growth Pact for fiscal-financial sustainability and macroeconomic stability, and some risks associated with operational...

In 2001 the Hungarian economy departed from the path of balanced growth. During the past six years the state budget deficit has grown to an unsustainable level, and also the deficit in the current accounts has become too high. Real wages have increased considerably faster than labour...

In this paper we test the impact of elections on fiscal policy in Latin American economies in comparison to OECD countries over the period 1990-2006. We find that in Latin American countries, the average primary balance declines by an amount close to 0.7 per cent of GDP during an election year,...

Austerity measures have been tested in developing countries for several decades under the pseudo name of ‘structural adjustment programmes’ following the recommendations and under the supervision of the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Evidence indicates...

We investigate how "news" affected domestic interest spreads vis-à-vis Germany and how it propagated to other countries during the recent crisis period, thereby distinguishing between the so-called GIIPS countries and other European countries. We make original use of the Eurointelligence...

This paper proposes a dynamic politico-economic theory of fiscal policy in a world comprising a set of small open economies, whose driving force is the intergenerational conflict over debt, taxes, and public goods. Subsequent generations of voters choose fiscal policy through repeated elections....

This paper is a contribution to the analysis concerning fiscal insurance and public debt management. We built fiscal indicators and present empirical evidence for the effect of the public debt management on the fiscal insurance based on the Brazilian economy. The analysis is based on two steps:...

Not much cross-country evidence exists on the time-series behavior of individual fiscal instruments in response to the public debt and to output. To remedy this situation, this study provides a set of detailed estimated fiscal reaction functions (or “fiscal rules”) governing these responses...

We calculate increases in contributions required to achieve full funding of state and local pension systems in the U.S. over 30 years. Without policy changes, contributions would have to increase by 2.5 times, reaching 14.1% of the total own-revenue generated by state and local governments. This...